


She Who Walks in the Light

by aureliu_s



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Sebastian Vael in the Chantry, The Chantry (Dragon Age), Warrior Trevelyan - Freeform, also in love, but he's still a babe, idk - Freeform, sebastian breaks vows, trevelyan is badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:31:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aureliu_s/pseuds/aureliu_s
Summary: Varric swears he's seen the up-and-coming Inquisitor Trevelyan before. A mug of ale to jog the memory never hurt.[As you can see, I'm bad at summaries.]





	She Who Walks in the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I was going to post this under my DA Prompts work, but it got super long so I decided it could be its own thing. :) Enjoy! And pls leave ideas or something in the comments, I'm getting writer's block

Varric Tethras thought of where he had seen this woman before, where in the world he’d met her face. The bottom of his tankard had no answers, and the drafty, run-down tavern gave no advice. He stared long and hard into the last sip of ale. Lavender eyes, red warpaint that curved and spiked elegantly around her eyes, blossoming onto her forehead. Skin tanned by the sun. A longsword, a shield with the Trevelyan coat of arms...

A shield with the Trevelyan coat of arms.

 

_Varric had little reason to be in the Chantry this late at night, but someone had to seek Sebastian out for Wicked Grace. Seeing as Fenris was already too drunk to function and Merrill had a larger chance of getting mugged than finding the priest, the duty had fallen to the dwarf. Sebastian’s answer was usually the same: it’s a mite late, don’t you think? Varric made himself come anyway._

_He shut the door against the distant thunder outside._

_“You better come this time, Choir Boy.” The dwarf mumbled to himself. Sebastian wasn’t far; he spotted a familiarly hunched figure in front of the candles at the foot of Andraste’s pedestal. Unless they had a massive shoulder deformation, no other silhouette looked like that. The dwarf started towards him, rubbing his gloved hands together to fend off the cold._

_He nearly grabbed Bianca when a second shadow emerged from the, well, shadows. The Arishok fight had him jumpy. This one was tall, strong, but slimmer than Sebastian. The dim lights left winking in the Chantry illuminated a shield with a rearing white horse in water, a ring of six words in a foreign language around it. Varric didn’t draw any closer than just before the corner, opting to stay in the shadows. Somehow it felt right. Where had he seen that coat of arms before?_

_“It’s a bit late to be praying, Brother, isn’t it?” The voice was alto but feminine._

_Sebastian jumped a little, chuckling so quietly it was hardly a breath. He pushed himself off the floor._

_“Yes, well, the Maker-“ He stopped when his gaze fell onto the woman’s face. “Azriel.”_

_An elf name? She didn’t sound like an elf. He’d never heard it before._

_“In the flesh. The Grand Cleric said I could find you here, but-“_

_“I was...helping a friend.”_

_Slowly the woman nodded, her lips grinning._

_“So I see.” The pair was silent for a moment before she shifted forward, hands taking his face. The dwarf’s jaw went slack: Sebastian Vael kissing someone? Alert the Chantry! Or...not the brightest idea._

_The maybe-Prince and ex-brother stood there for a moment, looking desperately like he wanted to stay there forever. Worry and conflict were etched into his brown face. Despite it all, he gently enclosed her wrists in his hands and moved away._

_“Azriel,” he murmured again, “not here.”_

_“I’ve come to give you some good news,” the woman smiled, despite Sebastian’s dodgy denial of her apparent affection. His choice of words interested the eavesdropping dwarf: instead of the usual “I can’t”, it had become “not here”. “You’ll have Trevelyan support for Starkhaven.” He couldn’t see close enough, but bet Sebastian’s features fell. “I know it’s not all of Ostwick. My father and I tried, but the Teryn refused. More accurately, his wife did.”_

_Sebastian swallowed, his unnerving silence seeming to make time run slow. At long last, his brogue accent cut the tension like an arrowhead._

_“I’m not going back to Starkhaven.”_

_The woman laughed uncertainly, slowly, experimentally._

_“Sebastian, I thought you’d be pleased. You asked me to work on Ostwick a year ago—“_

_“No. I’m not going back to Starkhaven.” He said it slower, even softer this time. His voice held no conviction. There was another pause, long enough for Varric to walk to the Hanged Man and back._

_“You’re giving up?” The woman sounded shocked, almost offended even, as if the prospect of giving up were so completely out of the question. She stepped away from Sebastian, catching the light. Varric finally got a good look at her face: she could’ve easily been mistaken for Sebastian’s distant cousin if she hadn’t just kissed him. Her face was built similar to his, with high cheekbones and bright eyes. Her jaw was a little more squarish, face tan but not naturally brown like the priest’s. He wasn’t close enough to see the color of her eyes._

_“Sebastian, we’ve worked for this.” Her shield with the white horse in water and the foreign words on it shifted as she moved back a little more. “Three years ago you were ready.”_

_“Elthina won’t take me back into the Chantry,” Sebastian shook his head, eyes fixed on the candles._

_“To the Void with the Chantry, Sebastian. Goran Vael is on the throne—do you know how much of a blunder that is? Starkhaven, under his rule, won’t last a decade.”_

_Sebastian was silent. He knew the risks of Goran’s reign; once Varric had put a little alcohol in him, he had become comfortably talkative. He preferred no Sebastian at all, but talkative Sebastian was better than religiously quiet Sebastian._

_“I want you to be happy,” the woman finally sighed, “that’s all.” The words sounded mostly sincere but forced. She wanted him to be happy but didn’t want him to spend the rest of his days in the sodding Chantry. “Are you happy in the Chantry?”_

_Varric was rightfully surprised when Sebastian gave no answer._

 

The woman in the Chantry. That made sense. Sebastian had told them a couple of times about a lady friend visitor, how he’d be “indisposed”—his exact word—when she arrived. Apparently that had applied to every time she came to Kirkwall. Which wasn’t wholly often, but often enough for even Varric to notice the priest’s absence. Elthina noticed it too, and bitterly told Hawke when she came searching that “Sebastian was out” and they’d have “better luck searching Hightown or Sundermount for him”.

The bartender in the run down tavern was another dwarf whose name he didn’t know. He glanced warily to Varric, preoccupied with the empty tankard in front of him. The writer was snatched out of his thoughts by another mug sloshing in front of him.

He gratefully took it.

_Satinalia._

_It was tamer in Hightown than anywhere else—with the exception of the Red Lantern District. Hightown was full of colorful streamers and banners, flowers, people who braved the fresh snow and thin air to walk the markets. Lowtown was buzzing with celebration; the first night of Satinalia was, by far, the best. The Hanged Man was stuffed with citizens and alcohol. Isabela had commandeered the bar, standing with her arm slung around Fenris. Varric was entertaining half-drunk patrons with far-flung tale of the Arishok battle, Anders Hawke, and Merrill listening closely with stupid grins. The glint off Sebastian’s chainmail jerkin caught the corner of the dwarf’s eye as he detailed the Qunari running his friend through._

_“--and he lifted his axe straight up, with Hawke still on the tip! We all thought for sure she was dead, and the whole city would fall to the Qunari.”_

_A woman moved aside as Sebastian stood, his eyes fixed hungrily on the door. Sliding fluidly to it, Varric caught him just before he disappeared._ _  
_ _“Where are you off to, Choir Boy?”_

_The prince turned with that soft Chantry smile of his and said:_

_“For some fresh air.” Merrill bounced from her seat and immediately began babbling about how she’d come along--she did love fresh air, after all--and the stench in the Hanged Man was growing a little more intolerable with every minute, and that..._

_Hawke caught the elf’s slim arm and sat her back down. The prince gave a grateful nod and disappeared into the night._

 

 _Everyone knew how the Arishok story went--if it hadn’t ended with Hawke’s flying-by-the-seat-of-her-pants victory, none of them would be able to spend the night getting drunk. There were still gasps when the mighty Arishok flung Hawke’s tattered body off his axe, and prepared to bring the blade to her neck, and cries of joy--even some guys embracing in the back--when Hawke’s magic icicle of death pierced him straight through the heart. The woman herself listened in content with Anders’ arm wrapped loosely around her. The tavern begged for another story but Varric announced he would hand the telling off to someone else. Soon enough they had forgotten him and surrounded another poor sod whose voice was loud and slurred enough. The dwarf finished off his drink._ _  
_ _“Where’s Sebastian?” He asked, looking around for the prince’s blindingly pure presence. Hawke shrugged. “Must’ve gone back to the Chantry.” He inhaled long before coughing. “Maker, it really does smell like shit in here. I’ll be right back.”_

_“Take your time,” Hawke’s grinning lips replied, finding Anders’ stubbled cheek not long after._

_Varric found himself standing in a slow, falling procession of snowflakes as the door closed behind him. He groaned; of course it would start to snow again. At least some people would be too drunk to stumble home. A pair of laughing voices caught his attention as he let his lungs absorb the clean air._

_“Maker, I wish it snowed more in Ostwick.”_   
_“I’m sure Starkhaven has plenty for both cities.” He instantly recognized Sebastian’s hearty chuckle as he and another figure rounded the corner, arm in arm._ _  
“I haven’t been in a while.” They stopped in the outskirts of the ring of light cast by the Hanged Man’s sconces, eyes turned towards the pitch sky. Something itched him wrong about this woman’s voice. Did he know it? Had he heard it before? Certainly not recently. “Goran takes all the fun--”_

 _The priest groaned._ _  
_ _“I don’t want to hear his name,” he half-whined, dropping his forehead against the woman’s opposite him. “I want to hear your voice, but not his name. Talk to me about something else.” He looked oddly human without his armor, more normal with just the jerkin. His arms fell to pull the woman against his chest._

_“My ass hurts from riding two hundred miles just you listen to you complain.”_

_Sebastian threw his head back and laughed._

_The sound almost startled the dwarf. He hadn’t heard Sebastian laugh before, not truly. Snorts and chuckles, mostly, from the back of the group, little exhales through his nose accompanied by a slight upturn of the lips. It was warm, loud, easy._ _  
_ _“Two hundred miles, just about, Vael. Just to hear your impeccable accent complain.” That soft Chantry smile spread across his features again and the woman placed her head under his chin, face turned towards the light._

_She was that same woman from the Chantry two years ago. With the same face, with red warpaint that circled her eyes, elegantly spiking upwards and downwards, blossoming onto her forehead. Varric felt that was new. And this time there was a greatsword across her back, no shield with a white horse rearing in blue waves. Momentarily her eyes opened, and the dwarf could’ve sworn they were indigo or lavender or something along those lines--but humans don’t have oddly colored eyes. Do they? Maker, the world’s gone to shit if they do._

_He hardly stayed around to watch the entirety of Sebastian’s fingers ceremoniously guiding her lips up to his, their kiss in the snow. He had written enough to know that it would happen._

 

His eyes lifted to the woman entering the tavern. A pale blue cloak sat around her shoulders, hands rubbing together to ward off the cold. The building was still drafty but it was one of the only places with a constant fire. She smiled at him, her red warpaint moving with her cheeks, her eyes bright against the flames.

_Maker’s balls, they’re purple. Purple eyes._

She walked like a warrior, coming to sit on the bench beside him. Not long after, a mug was placed in front of her.

“Smart. Get the tavern up and running first. That’s most important, huh?” Her smiled shifted to allow a breathy chuckle. Varric only nodded. Now he could see the finer features of her face. She certainly did share Sebastian’s cheekbones, but the bridge of her nose curved inwards just slightly. Her hair was pulled back in tidy maze of twists coming together to form a central braid. She was sun-tanned. Her fingernails were manicured, he noted as she lifted the mug. Strong, rounded-square jawline. Younger than him.

“Trevelyan, right?”

She seemed surprised that he was speaking to her, and nodded while finishing off the last of her drink. _Already? That was quick._   
“Azriel,” she waved her hand dismissively. “Everyone’s already called me Herald or Inquisitor enough for a lifetime.”  
“Azriel Trevelyan,” he repeated, nodding. Her ears were human. Besides, the only elf he’d seen with a greatsword was Fenris. Varric shifted towards her. She warily met his eyes, one eyebrow lifted. About to open her mouth to say something, he cut her off. It had to be her. There was no doubt about it.

“By any chance, do you know the Prince of Starkhaven?”

 


End file.
